Analysis of website usage by end users provides important information to the enterprise operating the website. The collected data can inform the enterprise on consumer trends, product interests, and other marketing related insight into the enterprise's business. Also, this information can be used to forecast user access to the website so that the computing platform can be sized to handle this future demand.
Conventionally there are two main techniques of collecting data on website usage: web server logfiles and page tagging. The web server can record file requests received from users' browsers, and these logfiles can be analyzed. Page tagging is implemented by embedding a script into the code that renders the website on the users' browser. This script records requests for the website. Data collected by either technique is analyzed to generate web traffic reports showing usage of the website. The accuracy of these web traffic reports can be suspect, and the error margin of the reports can be hard to quantify with any confidence.
The analytics provided by web usage can be used by enterprises to gage the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, user/consumer satisfaction, web traffic and site popularity. Additionally, web metrics can track a user's actions on the website itself by analyzing the users' clicks when visiting the webpage. Click analytics can be done in real-time, or stored for later analysis.